U.S. Official Resigns Over Afghanistan 10/28

Institute for Public Accuracy
980 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045
(202) 347-0020 * http://www.accuracy.org * ipa@accuracy.org
___________________________________________________
A top U.S. official in Afghanistan has resigned in protest of the war,
the Washington Post reports. "I have lost understanding of and
confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in
Afghanistan," Matthew Hoh, the senior U.S. official in Zabul province,
said in his letter of resignation. Many Afghans, he wrote, are fighting
the U.S. largely because its troops are there. The U.S. is asking its
troops to die in Afghanistan for what is essentially a far-off civil
war, Hoh said. He added that he decided to speak out because "I want
people in Iowa, people in Arkansas, people in Arizona, to call their
congressman and say, 'Listen, I don't think this is right.'"
ROBERT NAIMAN, http://www.justforeignpolicy.org
Naiman is policy director of Just Foreign Policy and co-creator of
the website http://NoEscalation.org, which enables Americans to track
where their representatives in Congress stand on military escalation in
Afghanistan.
He said today: "Hoh's letter of resignation challenges key premises
of the war, suggesting that if the United States withdrew its military
forces from Afghanistan, much of the conflict might subside. Hoh also
points out that the U.S. is essentially intervening in an ongoing Afghan
civil war, something that most Americans don't know and would likely
oppose."
Background:
Washington Post article "U.S. official resigns over Afghan war: Foreign
Service officer and former Marine captain says he no longer knows why
his nation is fighting"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/26/AR2009102603394.html
Text of Hoh's four-page letter of resignation [PDF]:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/hp/ssi/wpc/ResignationLetter.pdf
For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020, (202) 421-6858; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167